User:The ErosionSeeker/Lair Tests

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Is it time for a comprehensive lair stat test page? [Answer: YES!]

I know I'm not the only one tired of having to sift through unhelpful pages time and time again!

Probably the biggest issue with pages for the init and stat tests is that anyone who is in a position to try maximizing them will likely know the ways in the first place. Also, most of the good effects are IOTM, Dread, or other niche uses. One more thing, A Telescope with at least 2 upgrades is recommended, as this allows you to see the stat and element tests, letting you plan for what you need. Although this list was created with the Hardcore Standard ascension in mind, many softcore runs can take some advice from these lists.

If tests make you anxious, here's a cheatsheet for the Tower. sp NOTE: Not all of these sources are necessary to get to #2, and if you can't ensure hitting the maximum, it's better to just take the extra contestant turn than to hunt down the components to try and save the turn.

SECOND NOTE: Items marked with (IOTM) may not necessarily be an IOTM themselves, but may be tradeable components of an IOTM, such as permable skills that anyone can buy from the Mall of Loathing. Owning the IOTM is typically the only way to access them in Hardcore.

SECOND SECOND NOTE: If you cannot make the threshold set by the test, you instead get a weighted roll to determine the number of contestants you must fight. An example, for the elemental damage test, if you are only able to manage 95/100, you have a 50% chance of being marked as #2 or #3. Attempt to maximize whenever possible, gamble at your own risk.

THIRD NOTE: Due to the extreme spread of available buffs that can be acquired from the Genie, only the best one or two are listed. There will typically never be a reason for you to spend multiple wishes for one Lair test, but you could.

Capacity:

The Contest of Adventurers

There are 3 tests. The first test is for speed, the second for might, and the third for elemental prowess. Although there are 11 positions, there are only 10 available spaces. With maximized stats, you will only fight one opponent: the one who is ranked #1. IOTM or IOTM-derived content is marked with (IOTM), while Class-Specific actions (Soul Saucery, Turtle Taming) are also marked as such.

Combat Initiative

You want to reach 400% Combat Initiative in order to always get the shortest lineup.

Familiar:

  • The Woim increases initiative at 2x Weight. This is equivalent to +42% or more with 4 easily accessible +weight effects.

The following are items and effects that increase the familiar weight of this familiar.

Stat Tests

The stat test will always be different from the class's main stat. 600 in that particular stat guarantees the shortest lineup. Although it is safe to assume that percentage boosters will give about the same amount as a static boost, your mileage may vary. Some minor sources are omitted due to lapse of memory.

Boosts that Affect All Attributes

Muscle

Mysticality

Moxie

Elemental Tests

There will always be one elemental test, selected randomly out of 5. These tests are based off of elemental bonuses to Weapon Damage and Spell Damage. A bonus of 100 in the appropriate element ensures the shortest lineup. As every +10 damage to an element is 1 adventure saved, these elemental tests can be great ways to use an elemental semi-rare to cut 5 turns.

All-Elemental Boosts

Hot

Cold

Spooky

Stench

Sleaze

The Hedge Maze

The optimal way to do the hedge maze consists of 3 elemental damage tests that deal damage proportional to your maximum HP.

You need 8 points of resistance for the first test, 7 points of resistance for the second test, and 6 points of resistance for the third test. For a simpler way of remembering, 7 points of resistance in each element is sufficient. For people with Muscle-boosting effects that are going to wear off in between the second or third test, you may find yourself requiring even less than 7 or 6 resistance. Attempt at your own peril.

In certain paths, an alternative way to go through the damage tests without such an amount of elemental resistance is as follows:

  • Reduce your maximum HP
  • Maximize HP regeneration

You must get at least 3 adventures' worth of stat debuffs in order to go through the maze. If your negative effects run out, your HP will increase and make you lose!
You can reduce your HP by reducing your muscle, and you can get Hardly Poisoned at All from the Giant's poison drink in the Strange Leaflet.
Notable HP regeneration sources:

Peeling the wall of skin

The wall of skin has 50 HP and takes 1 damage from every attack. You need to deal 50 sources of damage over 4 (or 6) rounds. The wall of skin doesn't put up an easy fight either, it increases in damage every turn! The alternative to using brute force is to spend 3 adventures grabbing the beehive from The Black Forest. That's like, 2 turns you save by being able to 50-hit combo! Attacks:

  • Prismatic weapon attacks provides 6

Consider the following sources of +elemental damage:

  • Headbutt and Kneebutt both give an extra +1. Shieldbutt needs a shield, and if you aren't using a hot plate that's already costing you 1 point of damage per round, while if you do have a hot plate, you're still losing 1 damage in the final round. Seriously. Don't.

Familiar:

  • Imitation Crab de facto best free choice because it attacks 4 times every round, and will never become Standard-restricted!

Familiar equips

Sources of passive damage:

Sources of stinging damage, which do not work on the final turn thanks to how combat is structured:

In the absolute worst case scenario, it is still possible to deal "full" damage to the wall with items and effects acquired throughout the run:

Although not recommended because they cost you your turn's worth of weapon damage, strong enough healing, such as scented massage oil or something similar might allow you to survive an extra round of battle. Additionally, even though stuns and staggers are useless against the wall of skin, you can "dodge" its unblockable attacks using skills like Shell Up and Sauceshell, buying you valuable entire extra rounds worth of damage. Using either Shell on the round before the wall would do lethal damage will maximize your expected returns. Note that Blood Bubble will not meaningfully increase the number of rounds you have to fight.

Having one of Shell Up or Sauceshell gives you 5 turns to do 49 damage (since the Shell itself will do 1 damage), while having both gives you a nice 6 turns to do 48 damage. 13 damage a turn for 4 turns seems imposing, but 8 damage a turn for 6 turns is easy, especially with Imitation Crab!

The ideal combat rotation is Headbutt -> Headbutt -> Headbutt -> Shell Up -> Sauceshell -> Headbutt
Assuming full 7 damage Headbutts, you only need 15 additional bits of damage (3 sources of passive or 4 sources of stinging, Imitation Crab alone solves it in paths where it's allowed)

Without Shells, 50 damage in 4 rounds is significantly trickier. Still, after subtracting 28 from 4x Headbutt, you still need 22 damage:
2 passive + shrunken head + bottle buckle + protest button + Jalapeño + Scary + Spiky + Psalm = 23 (just enough), or 7 points after Imitation Crab.

If you want to get even crazier, consider enabling the setting for "enable auto-attack against boss and special monsters", and then set your autoattack to Headbutt, which gives you a "free" combat round because of how the wall of skin's damage ramping functions. 50 damage across 5 turns is great, and 48 over 7 rounds is completely trivial. This may or may not be fixed in the future.

Summary

Get the following:

  • Perm Headbutt or Kneebutt
  • Get an Imitation crab
  • Get prismatic elemental damage
  • Offhand a weapon, or use smirking shrunken head / hot plate

This deals 48 damage across 4 turns. If you have another source of passive damage, or you have Shell Up or Sauceshell, you're golden!

Beating your meat

The wall of meat has a bunch of meat! It has a base meat drop range of 160-240, and you need 1,001 to gather meat in order to defeat it for good. You will need +525.625% to guarantee that it only takes 1 turn. That being said, the wall of Meat can also be picked apart over multiple turns, so basically do whatever it was you did for the Nuns.

Familiar:

  • Leprechauns and Hobo Monkeys also benefit from weight increases. Unlike the Woim, they increase in effectiveness at a non-linear rate, so calculate to make sure. Jill of All Trades acts as a 1.5x meat familiar when using its equipment.

Refer to the items and effects that increase the familiar weight of these familiars. (List of all standard-legal Familiar Weight boosters)

Crushing the wall of bones

The wall of bones is a 20,000 HP group size 100 mini-ZHA that can only be damaged by group damage. Buff either Muscle, Mysticality and Spell Damage, or grab the electric boning knife from Castle if you must. Now that it is 2018 and Garbage Nova has rotated out, you must deal 20,000 group damage over 4 rounds, or 5,000 a round. Reduce your ML as low as you can! You're already at this stage of the Tower, why are you using ML anyways?

In a post-Garbage Nova world (coming to a metagame near you in 2018), negative Monster Level works double duty here, it both shrinks the wall by some amount (reducing its HP and more importantly, its 1000 defense), as well as improving all damage by 0.4% per point.

It may not be smart to go out of your way to acquire most of the -ML sources.

Splattersmash

Remember that the Wall of Bones has the high defense value of 1,000, you need to either buff Muscle above 1,000, or delevel it significantly in order to deal meaningful damage to the wall. If you spend a round deleveling the wall, you will have to deal 6,667 damage per round instead of 5,000.

Consider the following:
20,000 ÷ 4 = 5,000 (amount of damage required for a single round)
5,000 ÷ 25 = 200 (amount of damage when accounting for Splattersmash group/4 bonus)
200 - 30 = 170 (amount of damage after subtracting Splattersmash base damage 30-40)
170 + 1,000 (amount of Muscle required after adding the wall's defense)
You need 1,170 Muscle to Splattersmash 4 times for lethal damage.

(List of all standard-legal Muscle boosters)

Saucegeyser

At sufficiently buffed Mysticality and Spell Damage, Saucegeyser is viable. Keep in mind that this requires tremendous quantities of Spell Damage, Because Saucegeyser deals triple damage to group monsters, each cast of Saucegeyser needs to deal at least 1667 damage. Consider the following:
20,000 ÷ 4 = 5,000 (amount of damage required for a single round)
5,000 ÷ 3 ≈ 1667 (amount of damage when accounting for Saucegeyser tripling bonus)
1667 - 60 = 1607 (amount of damage after subtracting Saucegeyser base damage 60-70)
You need to deal 1607 unformatted damage 4 times for lethal damage.

This magic number 1607 can be partially made up of Mysticality and Spell Damage. See Calculating Spell Damage for a more detailed breakdown. With the assumption that your base Mysticality is 100 (as it probably will be for off-class), the following list can be of use. Note that effects from 2015 are excluded, because you would be using Garbage Nova. Seriously.

(List of all standard-legal Mysticality boosters)

Because Saucegeyser automatically tunes to the element that will deal the most damage, items and effects that boost hot spell damage should be considered:

And percentage boosts:

(List of all standard-legal Familiar Weight boosters)

While Spell Criticals are appreciated, they are unreliable and should not be considered except for hilarity, and are provided only for posterity.

1667 = spell% * (60 + 0.4*Mys + flat spell) 1454 = spell% * (60 + 0.4*Mys + flat spell)

In order to achieve 1667 base damage per round, take 60 + 0.4*Mysticality, and then add any flat spell damage. Then multiply by your percent spell damage. +400% spell damage is viable, so 1667 base damage gets compressed to 333.4 raw damage. Subtract about 100 flat bonus spell damage, and you're left with 233.4. Subtract the original 60 damage from Saucegeyser, and you're left with 173.4 damage derived from 434 Mysticality. With +500% spell damage and 100 flat bonus you need a mere 295 Mysticality. It's not pretty, but it's easy!

Cone of Zydeco

(CLASS-SPECIFIC: Accordion Thief) Deals base accordion damage + 0.4x moxie, multiplied by 5. Effectively requires 2,500 Moxie to deal 20,000 damage across 4 rounds. Do not attempt until something goes horribly, horribly wrong with the KoL meta.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Floor

Breaking the mirror increases the Sorceress's stats, and makes her immune to staggers. While not challenging for veteran players, lacking a fully decked-out World's Best Adventurer sash can make this more difficult than planned.

Shadowboxing

The Shadow opponent can only be defeated using healing items. It normally has 395 HP (different amounts possible in Bees Hate You, One Crazy Random Summer, Nuclear Autumn, Disguises Delimit (790 HP) which has to be whittled down as it tries to beat you down in return.

Saucy Salve is a great skill that should always be used at the start of the fight. It's not unusual to get your first 5 salves all free, whittling the shadow down by ~60 HP and guaranteeing that 4 war healers is sufficient. Consider the following to buy extra turns vs the shadow:

Opening with Saucy Salves, followed by 4 garters and poultices is typically enough, although it is prudent to have backup resources for in case you roll four 80s with the war healers. The single PADL Phone you receive from I Am The Brotherhood is worth a poultice in the hippy tent. Blood Bubble gives you a free turn.

The Naughty Sorceress herself

While the information on this page may be a little outdated, it goes into detail that people reading this page might not need. High DA gear and high +moxie gear is usually a good idea, the World's Best Adventurer sash can be really good after like 40 ascensions. Reminder that breaking the mirror makes the Sorceress 1 and 2 immune to staggers, as well as giving them doubled HP and probably higher stats. Wearing high DA equipment, as well as big stat boosters like a maxed out World's Best Adventurer sash can be extremely helpful. A constantly attacking familiar, or a Nosy Nose can also provide extra chances to land bit hits on the Sorceress.

Defeating The Naughty Sorceress

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